Women’s Rights: CEDAW shadow report for Portugal
The improvement of equality between men and women has become a top priority for many governments around the world. To assess the situation of women in terms of discrimination in Portugal, the Portuguese Platform for Women’s Rights prepared a shadow report for the 42nd Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The analysts discovered that, despite the slight improvement in confirming the social role and importance of women, there is still a general prevalance of gender stereotypes and an ongoing invisibility of women especially in the media and in advertising. Furthermore women are not sufficiently represented in political and public life, with men holding the key positions in political parties, government, public bodies and economic and social partners. The analysts explain this situation partly by the difficulties in balancing work and private life. In the field of education, the findings indicate that gender equality policies have not been mainstreamed in the educational sector and that there are lots of gender stereotypes in pedagogical programs and materials. Also the access to continuous professional training especially after working hours is found to be limited for women.
Similar to other countries, although they reach higher academic qualifications, women in Portugal are confronted with a glass ceiling hindering them from reaching top positions in a company, the report shows. At the same time, the gender pay gap becomes wider in the higher levels of qualification. Therefore the experts demand the implementation of affirmative actions. They also discovered massive gender stereotyping in employment advertisements with a strong tendency to separate ‘typically male’ and ‘typically female’ jobs as well as questions about private life issues like marriage or children in job interviews with women, even though this is prohibited by law. According to the researchers the government consequently needs to strengthen the monitoring of law and better inform the women about their rights. This is also valid for some employers pressuring men not to take paternity leave in exchange for extra payings.
With the inclusion of all aspects of social, political and working Life, the report represents a powerful tool to assess a country’s progress in terms of equality, not only between the genders.
